I was just reading the part of Genesis (ch 2&3) about Adam and Eve and realized or maybe was reminded that they had Eternal Life freely available to them and God welcomed them to eat/partake of it. I thought that I'd share this just in case there is another who hadn't realized this. The story is focused upon the forbidden tree and their disobedience and overshadows/ed this fact, for me anyway.
Apparently, they hadn't partaken of the tree of life, yet.
Ge 2:9 "The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
Ge 2:16-17: "And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
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Genesis 2 NIV
Ge 3:22 "And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”"
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Genesis 3 NIV>
I thought this the best forum to place this thread but if Staff has a better place for it, please...
Man has a moral choice, to be subjugated to God, or not-and he's
lost to the extent that he's not in communion with Him. Adam & Eve began life in Eden
neutral in regard to that choice. They were gifted in so many ways, and they knew God, but didn't yet appreciate what they had. To eat of the Tree of Life would've been the right choice, of drawing nearer to Him, of
choosing Him
, while eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil meant to draw
away from Him, to effectively reject Him as their God; by disobeying Him they denied His authority
over them, becoming their own "gods". Choosing and aligning ourselves with God is the primary and final choice of choosing good over evil, life over death. God is the ultimate Good.
Adam and Even had set themselves and their whole world including their progeny into an exile away from God. But this exile was still within God's plans-of ultimately steering them
back to Himself, the Tree of Life. It was just the
long way home- to that right choice. By eating of the wrong tree they would experience-they would
know- good and evil, the natural consequence of their separation from Him, for themselves, directly, viscerally, and
daily, as we all do now, and by that knowledge, earned the hard way, they-and we-could become all the more ready and willing to choose
good over evil, having developed a hunger and thirst for truth and righteousness and justice and hope and love in a human-ruled world that lacks all of those in so many ways.
They might come to believe in and turn back to God, as He graciously opens that door when the time is ripe by revealing and offering Himself to them again, the God they had abandoned and forgotten in favor of themselves and their own moral preferences. Like Prodigals who've experienced life in the pigsty, relatively speaking, they're now potentially more pliable clay in the hands of the Potter, to make of them what He's intended all along. They had gained the appreciation they previously lacked. They know something of the infinite difference between Creator and created-and of their need for Him. We're all here to obtain that bit of wisdom.
